He was a known as the “fisherman’s friend” and served as a north-east MP for three decades.
But according to papers released by MI5, Tory peer Robert Boothby and East End gangster Ronnie Kray went to “homosexual parties” together and were “hunters” of young men.
In 1964 it was suggested that Lord Boothby, a popular TV presenter and former MP for East Aberdeenshire, was having an affair with Kray, one of London’s most notorious criminals.
The story was broken that July by the Sunday Mirror, which did not name the pair but claimed to have a photo of them together, and they were later identified in a German magazine.
The allegations caused a furore in Westminster and documents show the home secretary, Henry Brooke, was so concerned he summoned the head of MI5 amid fears it might erupt into a scandal to rival the Profumo affair.
Lord Boothby publicly denied having a homosexual or any other close relationship with Kray and allowed the photo of the pair on a sofa at his flat discussing “business matters” to be published, dismissing rumours about his personal life as a “tissue of atrocious lies”.
But declassified files released by the National Archives at Kew, west London, show he was much closer to Ronnie Kray and his brother Reggie than he admitted.
According to an MI5 inside “source”, who was described as a “self-confessed homosexual”, Lord Boothby was in a relationship with his chauffeur, a young “Shoreditch-born former boxer” named Leslie Holt, alias Johnny Kidd, giving him expensive cars and taking him to the opera.
Despite homosexuality being illegal then, the source suggested the relationship was serious, saying: “They are genuinely attached; this is no fly-by-night-affair.”
The MI5 report revealed Holt told the source he had introduced Lord Boothby to Ronnie Kray – both widely known to be gay or bisexual – and “they’d been to a couple of (homosexual) parties together”.
In an apparent contradiction to Lord Boothby’s explanation for the photo, Holt told the source: “Boothby and Ronnie had been photographed together (a normal, social pose) at one of these parties.”
The source added: “Boothby is a kinky fellow and likes to meet odd people, and Ronnie obviously wants to meet people of good social standing, he having the odd background he’s got; and, of course, both are queers.
“Leslie never suggested that there was any villainous association between the two and they are not likely to be linked by a queer attraction for each other: both are hunters (of young men).”
The report also suggested that the Sunday Mirror was tipped off about the “affair” between Lord Boothby and Ronnie by the Nash gang, rivals of the Krays, but they had got the details wrong.
The MI5 report said: “Certainly the suggestion that Boothby has been having an affair with the gangster Kray is hardly true.
“Ronnie, 34 and ugly, he (the source) repeats, is a hunter. Nash or whoever told the story to the ’Mirror’ seemed to have got the two people with a record mixed up, Leslie and Ronnie.”
The information was shared with Scotland Yard, and a note by Roger Hollis, the director general of MI5, revealed the concerns the possibility of a scandal caused Whitehall.
He wrote: “The Home Secretary and some of his colleagues felt that this might develop along the lines of the Profumo affair.”
But Mr Hollis said he felt “no security issue was involved” as Lord Boothby had no official position that could allow him to compromise government secrets.
Professor Christopher Andrew, the former official historian of MI5, suggested Lord Boothby – who was also a long-term lover of former prime minister Harold Macmillan’s wife – walked a political tightrope with his relationships.
He said: “As Boothby’s MI5 file shows, his relations with the Krays, who were later sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, were much closer than he admitted.
“Had those relations been made public at the time, the resulting scandal would have been even more deeply embarrassing than the Profumo affair for the former prime minister, Harold Macmillan.”